Heaps Of History Captured In Piles Of Coal Mine Rock

Monuments To Immigrant Labor Rise From Illinois Flats

December 02, 1996|By Wes Smith, Tribune Staff Writer.

TOLUCA, Ill. — When a village backhoe with no sense of history tore into one of the "jumbos" rising over this central Illinois community, Elton Pearson became so incensed he marched downtown on a chilly day last month with a petition in hand.

He planted himself in front of the post office and within three hours gathered 226 signatures calling for a halt to any future desecration.

In response to Pearson's campaign, the town council passed a resolution proclaiming the 200-foot-tall mounds of coal waste to be "part of the heritage of the City of Toluca to be preserved and protected."

It is the second time in recent years that Pearson, a history buff, has rushed to the rescue of the massive, 73-year-old shale piles commonly known as "jumbos" in these parts.

The other occurred when some free-lance landscapers helped themselves to a truckload from Toluca's twin peaks. After that attack, Pearson, 70, successfully lobbied the city to buy the shale piles and the surrounding 101 acres from a private owner for $100,000.

"There aren't too many in this town who think of the jumbos as just piles of rock because most of them had relatives who worked in the mines," the retired electrician said.

The jumbos of Toluca and a scattered mini-mountain range of similar mounds across the upper center of the state are among the few remaining signs of the earliest--as well as the deadliest--coal mining operations in Illinois, state geologists said.

Hundreds of workers died or were injured in mine collapses while attempting to harvest thin veins of coal running roughly parallel to the Illinois River in an east-west arc from Coal City to Spring Valley. These veins fed Chicago's ravenous steam engines, furnaces and factories as well as its early growth as nature's metropolis, said Dwaine Berggren, a retired Illinois Geological Survey geologist.

In the 1980s, Berggren participated in a statewide inventory that mapped more than 60 of the shale piles, and he came to regard the man-made mountains as "as conspicuous monuments on the plain."

"People have a right to be proud of their shale piles, which are relatively benign markers," Berggren said. "We need to understand their industrial and cultural history, especially that rich mix of people whose immigrant ancestors did heroic work in those dreadful mines."

In this part of the state, the coal veins run so thin that miners were required to clear out all surrounding rock, even that supporting the roof over their heads. In the early forms of long-wall mining, it was standard practice to cave in the roof behind you as you worked, Berggren said.

"Mortality rates ran high in these mines, and the stories about them are not heartwarming, but they are tough stories about a hard way of life," the geologist said.

"Every time the miners would get organized to do something about conditions, the mine companies would recruit another immigrant group. That is why you had waves of English, Irish and Italians in this part of Illinois," Berggren added.

Near the rural village of Cherry, northwest of Ottawa, a "whopper" shale pile marks the site of one of the worst mine disasters in U.S. history, he said.

On Nov. 13, 1909, 259 miners were killed when a load of hay being taken down to the mine's mules was ignited by a torch. It was to be the worst mining accident in the state's history, the third worst in the nation's.

The state maintains a memorial at the base of the Cherry jumbo, which is owned by the Bartoli family, though they would not mind parting with the mound and the trouble it poses.

"People climb it, and smoke pot on it, and we are afraid of getting sued some day," Alice Bartoli complained. "I wish the state would take it down."

Once considered eyesores and potentially menacing because of chemical reactions in their inner cores, many of the state's shale piles have been dismantled and used for highway construction or landfill cover.

A few towns, though, have adopted and preserved their jumbos as memorials to their coal mine origins, or simply as landmarks of distinction on the glacier-troweled flats of Illinois.

On the prairie, even a good-size pile of rubble offers the opportunity not only for a lofty vantage point but also for adventure.

"As kids we used to climb ours all the time," recalled Roanoke Mayor Joe Amigoni. "When we got older, we cut a road up it with a 'dozer and sometimes we'd take old cars up to the top and push them off. It was quite a thing to see."

Roanoke's jumbo, which also served as the launching point for its 4th of July fireworks, is privately owned now, but the city still maintains a lighted American flag atop it. During the Christmas season, a lighted star is added, and come Easter, a lighted cross.

Small towns have found many uses for their shale piles. A number of communities including Roanoke, Mark and Cherry have parks at the base of their jumbos. Others have trails for hiking or off-road vehicles.

During the Cold War, Wenona boasted a U.S. military radar sentry station atop its coal waste pile. From their shale mountain shack, soldiers guarded Chicago against air attack from the south, according to local historians, who proudly noted that the city was never overrun.

Toluca may be the proudest jumbo locale of all. It calls itself "Slag City," using the term for the shale rock removed from mines that gave birth to this town in the 1890s. Three shafts there employed the immigrant Italian miners whose descendants still make up the bulk of the population of 1,300, though the mines closed in the 1920s.

Pearson would like to see the Toluca jumbos developed as nature preserves, and he is lobbying Caterpillar Tractor Co., for donations.